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MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Friday refused to consider suit filed by a prominent Russian opposition figure, who accused President Vladimir Putin of breaking the nation's anti-corruption law.
The papers were filed by Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who accused Putin of failing to declare a conflict of interest regarding a low-interest, $1.75 billion loan granted to a company where a man described as Putin's son-in-law is a shareholder.
Navalny wrote in a Thursday blog post that the petrochemical production company Sibur, where Kirill Shamalov is a member of the board of directors, was charged an unusually low 2 percent interest rate on the loan from Russia's National Wealth Fund.
On Friday, the Tverskoi court in Moscow refused to take up the suit. The court's spokeswoman Anastasia Dzyurko said that it ruled that the suit couldn't be considered under the Russian code of administrative offenses, the Interfax news agency reported.
Navalny, a popular blogger and anti-corruption crusader who played a key role in organizing anti-Putin protests in Moscow in 2011-2012, said on his Twitter that he and his team would continue pressing the case.
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